Donald Trump’s Call for Muslim Registry Denounced by Democrats

WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. The billionaire Republican candidate’s suggestion of a U.S. registry to track members of the religion has prompted stiff rebukes from within his party, and civil rights experts call the idea outright unconstitutional.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump drew rebukes from two White House rivals on Friday for saying he would implement a database to keep track of Muslims in the United States and require them to register in response to the attacks in Paris.NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump often argues the number of people looking for work in the U.S. far surpasses government figures, something he says helps fuel the discontent that drives thousands of people to his rallies.SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Ted Cruz on Friday disavowed Donald Trump’s support for requiring American Muslims register as such, a rare public break with the current GOP frontrunner. “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump’s but I’m not a fan of government registries of American citizens,” he told reporters of a plan Trump said he backed a day earlier. “The First Amendment protects religious liberty, I’ve spent the past several decades defending religious liberty.” Cruz, like Trump, is running for president but has so far been particularly careful to avoid publicly criticizing the bombastic Trump’s candidacy, acknowledging that eventually he’d like to be the first choice of all voters, including those currently backing Trump.

Ted Cruz is among several Republican candidates for president who say they’re against GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s call for a mandatory database to track Muslims in America. Asked how that differed from efforts last century to track Jews in Nazi Germany, and said: “You tell me.” His comments came amid renewed security concerns following the Islamic State attacks in Paris last week that killed at least 129 people, and a political fight over U.S. plans to take in 10,000 refugees from Syria. He argues the statistics tallied by the government are “devised by politicians to make themselves look good.” “If you’re looking for a job and you quit after three or four months, you just can’t find a job, you go into that group of 100 million people that are sort of in there with you to a large extent, and you’re considered, you know, statistically you’re considered employed.” Trump’s total of 100 million is only true if you include every 16-year-old who is still in high school and every 80-year-old grandmother who long ago retired. Kasich, whose Super PAC is launching a $2.5 million series of attacks against Trump, said the proposal proved the real estate mogul was not worthy of the White House. “The idea that someone would have to register with the federal government because of their religion strikes against all that we have believed in our nation’s history,” Kasich said in a statement. “It is yet another example of trying to divide people, one against the other. Donald Trump is unable to unite and lead our country.” Trump tied his database proposal to his immigration policy, which has become a central focus of his campaign for the Republican nomination in the November 2016 election.

Trump, who leads the Republican presidential field in opinion polls, has called for deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in America and building a large wall along the border with Mexico. And he seemed to have the potential to rise higher, with Republicans giving Carson the highest marks of any candidate — by far — on personal favorability. Trump, who earlier in the week called for shutting down American mosques, said Muslims would be legally required to register for the database and would be signed up “at different places.” As the debate over terrorism has gained prominence on the campaign trail, early polls show Republicans turning to Trump, a billionaire with no previous government experience, to tackle the issue. That won’t fly in any court.” “You’re talking about internment, you’re talking about closing mosques, you’re talking about registering people, and that’s just wrong,” Bush said Friday on CNBC. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in the days after the attack found 33 percent of Republicans think he is best suited to address terrorism, leading the field.

He replied, “They have to be.” Civil liberties experts said Trump’s idea is unconstitutional on several counts, while the libertarian Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro said the idea also violates basic privacy and liberty rights. This is why many critics of President Barack Obama, Trump among them, dismiss the current unemployment rate of 5 percent, which is low by historical standards. The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll paints a clear picture of what’s happening: At the heart of Carson’s rise has been the support of white evangelical voters, who hold particular sway in Iowa (where they accounted for nearly 60% of all caucus-goers in 2012) and South Carolina (where they made up 64% of the 2012 primary electorate). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has slotted the bill for possible Senate consideration, though it’s unclear whether the chamber could get enough votes to override a veto by Obama, who opposes the measure.

Republicans have vacillated in their handling of other inflammatory comments from the bellicose billionaire, wary of alienating the front-runner’s supporters but also increasingly concerned that he’s managed to maintain his grip on the GOP race deep into the fall. “Individuals cannot be singled out for government surveillance and monitoring based on their religious beliefs,” said Steven Shapiro, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. A super PAC supporting Kasich had started running a television advertisement in New Hampshire questioning Trump and Carson’s preparedness for being commander in chief. The movement is even more striking with Republicans who describe themselves as “very conservative.” With this group, Carson’s support has been sliced in half in the last three weeks, from 30% to 15%, while Cruz has jumped from 25% to 40%. Aspects of Carson’s life story, which has been crucial to his appeal to religious conservatives, have been challenged by several press reports this month. Asked by reporters Thursday night to explain his Yahoo comments, Trump suggested his response had been misconstrued. “I never responded to that question,” he said.

But Carson dismissed these as ideologically motivated attacks from the liberal media, and conservative leaders and press outlets largely stuck by him. He also suggested he would consider warrantless searches, according to Yahoo, saying, “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before.” “Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.

Just compare Carson’s trajectory to that of Trump, who took the lead in the Real Clear Politics national polling average a month after entering the race in June and then held it — through countless predictions of his imminent demise — for the next 107 days.